The fall of Rome and Augustine

Rome, August 410

On 24 August 410 the Visigoths under Alaric entered Rome and plundered it for three days. It was the first time in nearly eight hundred years that the city had fallen to a foreign enemy. Alaric and his army were Christians, of the Arian faith that had not received the confession of Nicaea. Augustine tells how the churches of the apostles sheltered those who fled to them: "in the sack of the city they were open sanctuary for all who fled to them, whether Christian or Pagan" City of God 1.1.

The shock was still great. The city called the head of the world had fallen, and refugees fled to Africa and Palestine. Pagans blamed the Christians: Rome had abandoned its old gods. It was not yet twenty years since Theodosius had forbidden pagan sacrifice in 391 and 392 (see Constantine: from persecution to toleration). Christians too were shaken, and asked why the city of Christian emperors had fallen.

Two loves, two cities

Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, first comforted his people in sermons, and then, from 413 to 426, answered in the twenty-two books of The City of God. He pointed out that Rome had suffered many disasters before Christ came, and then told the story of humankind as the story of two cities:

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.

City of God 14.28

The two cities are mingled in this world until the end, so no earthly kingdom, Rome or any other, is the city of God. Within the church, he wrote, are some who will not in the end dwell with the saints, and among its enemies are hidden some who will one day be fellow citizens City of God 1.35. His teaching is the Theology course's Augustine, doctor of grace. The word he held to was this:

For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Hebrews 13:14

Paul says the same: "our citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20). Wesley explains the word: "our citizenship, our thoughts, our affections, are already in heaven" Wesley.

The bishop of Hippo

Augustine (354–430) was born at Thagaste in North Africa to a Christian mother, Monica. He studied at Carthage, followed the Manichees for years, and in 384 became professor of rhetoric at Milan, where he heard the sermons of Bishop Ambrose. In a garden in the summer of 386 he heard a child's voice chanting ‘Take up and read’, opened Paul's letters and read, as he tells in the Confessions (8.12); at Easter the next year he was baptised with his son Adeodatus and his friend Alypius Confessions 9.6. Back in Africa he was made a presbyter at Hippo in 391 and its bishop in the mid-390s, and for more than thirty years he preached there, judged disputes and cared for the poor.

In 429 the Vandals under Gaiseric crossed from Spain into Africa, and in 430 they laid siege to Hippo. When a bishop asked whether he might flee, Augustine answered that while people remain who need them, their pastors must not leave. His friend Possidius, bishop of Calama, writing around 432, tells that in August of that year, with the city under siege, Augustine died with the penitential psalms fixed to the wall to read Possidius, Life of Augustine 28–31.

While the empire fell

The Vandals took Carthage in 439, and their Arian kings later drove out and persecuted the catholic bishops of Africa: one more chapter of Christians persecuting Christians. In Italy in 452 Leo I, bishop of Rome, went north to meet Attila, king of the Huns, and Attila withdrew. Historians see other reasons too, such as famine and sickness in his army, and the story of Peter and Paul appearing in the sky with swords is later legend. When Gaiseric sacked Rome in 455, Leo again went out to plead, and the city is said to have been spared burning and slaughter.

In 476 the Germanic general Odoacer deposed the last emperor in the West. The empire lived on in the East, centred on Constantinople, for nearly a thousand years more, but in the West bishops more and more filled the places left empty by imperial officials. They spoke for their cities to the invaders, and some melted down the church's vessels to ransom captives. The monasteries kept learning alive. In the mid-sixth century Cassiodorus, once a high official of the Ostrogothic kingdom, founded a monastery at Vivarium in southern Italy where monks copied the Scriptures and older books, and Benedict's monasteries read and copied books too (see The desert and the monastery).

When Rome fell, the church did not, for its hope had never been in Rome:

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth is transformed and the mountains are toppled into the depths of the seas, though their waters roar and foam and the mountains quake in the surge. Selah

Psalm 46:1-3

Matthew Henry writes on this psalm: "Let those be troubled at the troubling of the waters, who build their confidence on a floating foundation" Matthew Henry. And what John saw was not a city built on earth but one coming down from heaven:

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21:2

Christians today also see the nations and civilisations they love shaken. Augustine's writing and his life tell us to take no nation for the city of God, and yet not to despair, but to care for our neighbours in the middle of the falling city. The next lesson, The church beyond the empire, turns to the churches that grew up beyond Rome's borders.

Practice